Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!'

We have no doubt that 'stirred for a bird' was an added excellence to
the poet's ear; to our sense it is a serious blemish on lines which have
'the roll, the rise, the carol, the creation.'

There is no good reason why we should give characteristic specimens of
the poet's obscurity, since our aim is to induce people to read him. The
obscurities will slowly vanish and something of the intention appear;
and they will find in him many of the strange beauties won by men who
push on to the borderlands of their science; they will speculate whether
the failure of his whole achievement was due to the starvation of
experience which his vocation imposed upon him, or to a fundamental vice
in his poetical endeavour. For ourselves we believe that the former was
the true cause. His 'avant toute chose' whirling dizzily in a spiritual
vacuum, met with no salutary resistance to modify, inform, and
strengthen it. Hopkins told the truth of himself--the reason why he
must remain a poets' poet:--

I want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O then if in my lagging lines you miss
The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,
My winter world, that scarcely yields that bliss
Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.'

[JUNE, 1919.